When arts journalist and critic Rosemary Waugh first had the idea of creating a collection of interviews with women theatre directors, she sought out existing books on the topic – only to find there were none. This gap in the literature spurred Rosemary to write her new book, Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors, which is out now.

Here, Rosemary discusses why a book with this specific focus is so badly needed, how her interview subjects – who rank amongst the most renowned, exciting and creative directors working today – spoke to the ‘relevance and irrelevance’ of gender, and what she hopes readers will take from it.

As a journalist and critic, I frequently have the pleasure of interviewing artists and performers about the amazing, inspiring, and sometimes infuriating work they make. These discussions are almost always fascinating, no matter what my personal artistic tastes and preferences are. Talking about theatre is the best job because the conversation can go to so many different places. There is a never-ending supply of things to say about both the contents of a play itself – the location, the historical backdrop, the themes and all the things a director is planning to do with it – and how a person approaches making theatre in general, both practically and philosophically.

However, the conventions of journalism and the task of producing a normally short-ish article that is almost always tied to the opening of a new show, means that so much of those conversations remained buried in an archive of transcripts on my laptop. It was all this other ‘stuff’ – the ‘stuff’ that was often classed as too niche (or too ‘theatre geek’, as I prefer) for a wide audience – that I normally found the most interesting. It was here that a director would start sharing studious, thoughtful and affecting reflections on their own artistic practice, developed over years of creating work.

So, in 2021, the enforced break of the coronavirus pandemic gave me an unplanned but useful opportunity to take stock of my career and commit to a project long bubbling away at the back of my mind. The result is my new book, Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors, which is out now.

I wish I had a more interesting answer to why I wanted to make a book about the UK’s leading contemporary female directors than: there wasn’t one. But that was a big part of it. Prior to starting the project, I sought out existing books on the topic. I discovered that the few collections that did exist were either out of date, or focused on a different cohort (for example, international or US-based) than the people I wanted to interview. I found it outrageous that the expertise of so many exceptional artistic minds would not be present if, for example, you were a student on the lookout for a book about directing. This included the women who had run many of the nation’s most important theatres and companies for decades, and the women who created a significant portion of the work performed on those stages.

The argument for writing a book that focuses solely on women is, of course, more complex than that. Although I think a glaring blank in the existing literature tells a convincing story of its own. Several years ago, I made a conscious decision in my own interviewing practice to avoid asking interviewees questions based on demographic characteristics. Put more crudely, I wanted to avoid ever again asking a young, Black, female director questions about being a young, Black, female director. While being absolutely open to discussing age, race and gender, I wanted to break away from a reductionist practice which unfairly burdens artists who are not older, white and male with having their work viewed solely through the prism of identity. To borrow an observation Katie Mitchell shares in Running the Room, Sam Mendes is not asked what it is like to be a male director (although maybe he should be).

So, to write a book about specifically female directors perhaps runs counter to this ideal. One rule I came up with – and then promptly broke – was not to ask any questions about feminism, femaleness or femininity. I wanted to approach everyone’s artistic practice in the same way that a male director’s practice would be approached. But the problem is: gender is relevant. And, in my opinion, fascinating. Many of the women represented in the book explore the concept in their own work and use feminist principles to underpin how and why they make art. Many have also experienced how their gender has impacted on their working life, from one-to-one interactions backstage to job offers given or withheld.

The question of whether being female is a barrier to success in the theatre industry is an interesting one. When I approached the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) for recent statistics on female directors, I was told that 58% of the plays submitted for the 2023 Olivier Awards (eligibility period 21 February 2022 – 14 February 2023) were directed by female-identifying directors. That sounds pretty great, although the numbers fell sharply for musicals (only 18% by female-identifying directors) and ‘entertainment or comedy plays’ (25% by female-identifying directors). SOLT’s remit covers London’s top and mid-sized theatres, including West End venues and places like the National Theatre, Old Vic and Young Vic, Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court Theatre. To be eligible for an Olivier Award, a show simply needs to be on at a SOLT venue for more than the minimum number of performances each category states. In the case of plays, they must have a run of more than thirty performances to be in with a chance of winning an award.

That 58% suggests women directors are well represented in the industry and in line to receive its biggest accolades. Yet if we look at one of the awards those women could win, the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director at the Olivier Awards, the other side of the picture presents itself. Since its inauguration in 1976, this award has only been won by five women: Deborah Warner (1988), Marianne Elliott (2013 and 2020), Lyndsey Turner (2014), Miranda Cromwell (2020, alongside Elliott) and Rebecca Frecknall (2022). Despite being a significant and integral part of the British theatre industry, the work of female directors remains overlooked and undervalued when compared to their male counterparts – although the dates of those female winners suggest this is improving. This tallies with what I’ve been repeatedly told when interviewing female directors over the years: gender is both irrelevant and relevant. Which, if nothing else, certainly makes it worthy of continued conversation.

Running the Room is a book of many voices. It is not a set of rules or a checklist of ‘things to do’ when directing a play. Nor is it a manifesto promoting one approach to making theatre above another. Indeed, if it has a theme, it is this: there is no right way to be a theatre director. Or rather, there are as many ways of being a (female) theatre director as there are (female) theatre directors. What I often enjoyed most about talking to the brilliant creatives represented in the book was discovering how passionate they are about doing the exact opposite to one another. Or, in a less extreme way, doing a million different variations of each other’s practice.

The edited conversations reproduced in the book contain a great array of advice and information that will remain useful and interesting for years to come. It’s not a ‘do-this’ doctrine, but a multicoloured patchwork of insights gleaned from Britain’s most ferocious, fearless and creative female directors. These are the words of women who, to paraphrase Sarah Frankcom, weren’t ever content to just sit there, silently.

---

This is an edited extract from Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors by Rosemary Waugh, out now.

Save 20% when you order your copy directly from our website here – plus, you’ll for a limited time only, you’ll receive a free set of exclusive postcards with every copy, featuring quotes from the book (available while stocks last).